un regalo per nekosalosa (original) (raw)

Dusk Is Too Late
by ? // for nekosalosa

characters/pairings: Gokudera/Tsuna
rating: PG
warnings: Light spoilers for the TYL arc.
wordcount: 1700

summary: To be sure, Tsuna will miss many things...

Tsuna is watching the sun on its slow trajectory from the peak of the sky. He supposes the cliche is that he will miss the sunsets, that he is taking in his final one. But this is not true.

To be sure, Tsuna will miss many things: Kyouko's gentle smile, Yamamoto and Ryohei playing with the kids, Hibari's distant support. He will miss the dinners he still shares once a week with his mother. He will miss the brief and infrequent visits made by his father and the pleasant sounds of Bianchi and Haru and Fuuta in the kitchen.

But sunsets are a different story. He has never watched a sunset with Kyouko. He has never followed the sun's descent over the sky while neatly shuffling the last of his paperwork into a pile before calling it a night. These are not sunsets to Tsuna. The sunset images of poetry and romance are lies.

For Tsuna, sunsets are a darkened den, the faint embers of a dying fire, two wing-backed chairs and Gokudera sitting across from him. Sunsets are a split bottle of wine and an endless night of strategy.

"Tenth."

Tsuna has long understood that Gokudera says this when he doesn't know what else to say, as if Tsuna is the answer to his every question.

A dark voice in Tsuna's head advises him: You can't go with me. It's dangerous. Say it.

Another voice, one like the voice he knew when he was a no-good grade-schooler, counters: It's all dangerous.

In the faint firelight, Tsuna spreads a smile across his face. "I need you here. With Ryohei in Italy, I need you and Yamamoto in the compound."

That thing in his head sometimes, that other voice, the deep rough one, sometimes he thinks it's his blood talking to him--ancestors of whom he'd long been unaware, a lineage of past Mafia dons, from Timoteo the Ninth back through Giotto the First. Giotto is always there, always smiling in that knowing, disappointed way, watching him be weak, watching him fumble his way to strength. Tsuna hated that look on Giotto's imaginary face.

Still, despite the fear that curls in his gut at the thought of it, he knows these are days when he needs to be more like Giotto than ever. The world has become a place which does not allow for weakness. Not when he knows what he has to do.

The firelight in the otherwise dark den only accentuates the deep pocket of Gokudera's frown. He stands beside the hearth, his elbow up on the mantle, dark suit hanging loose on his bones like it always does at the end of the day, the fibers as tired as the rest of his body.

How many times have they sat in this warm room, in the dark, in expensive wing-backed chairs facing each other, wrapping their ghostlike voices around concepts of family and strategy and danger and death? How many times has Gokudera slid from his chair to sit at Tsuna's feet on the floor, closing the distance so their voices could mingle in whispers, his knees pulled up to his chest, a glass long emptied of wine at his side? For years, they have been doing this exact thing. And each evening, they emerge together, wiser for their time in the room. More exhausted, the dark circles beneath their eyes devouring their youth; bodies more exhausted but minds and souls renewed.

And Tsuna hates it. He hates these nights, this sick feeling curling inside his chest. He hates the serious look on Gokudera's face, the one that he often wears, but the one which he adopts most frequently when he enters this den. In the den, in the firelight, he is all Vongola.

"What isn't dangerous these days," Gokudera asks, "leave Yamamoto here. He can protect the girls and the kids."

And this is the thing. This is the thing--it has taken Tsuna a decade to drag Gokudera out of the reserve he wears like a bulletproof vest. A decade of warmth and support and a welcoming smile. A decade of shaking the Right-Hand Man out of his Right-Hand Man--sometimes for just an evening watching fireworks, sometimes for just a moment. But he can do it. He knows Gokudera's combination now and when the tumblers fall into place just so, Gokudera opens up and friendship--bright, surprising friendship--comes spilling out of him.

But once the sun begins to set, once they are tucked away, the friend in Gokudera evaporates. Gokudera has always been a Mafia brat at heart.

And now he pushes away from the fireplace and strides to his usual chair. With a soft sigh, he lowers into it. Tsuna won't say he's starting to sound old. They all were. "I'll go with you," he continues, "it can't hurt to have two of us, right?"

Even in the dark with the soft light and shadow of flame fluttering over their faces, even in this Tsuna can feel the intensity of Gokudera's insistence. He has to look away into the fire.

"That wasn't part of the negotiations."

That deep voice again: That's a lie.

His own voice struggles to counter: Shut up.

But he sighs. He knows the voice is right. It is a lie.

Byakuran had invited him, in that too-sweet voice, with that ever-cruel smile, to bring along as many of his Guardians as he wished. And Tsuna knows what such an invitation means. So, no, of course he won't allow any of his Guardians to accompany him. War or not, he loves them. They are his friends as well as his charges. He wants them, dismal as their hopes may be, to have a fighting chance.

"I could protect you."

And there it is again. That word, that plea, that prayer.

"Gokudera." Tsuna holds out a hand to him. When Gokudera stands from his chair and comes closer, Tsuna cups his hand around Gokudera's elbow. "I will be fine. It's just negotiations."

"Just negotiations!" Gokudera's eyes are wide. "This is Byakuran! This is the Millefiore!" He sighs and kneels in front of Tsuna. "Tenth, please. I can't let you go by yourself."

My men are weak.

Tsuna fights down the grimace which wants to claim his face. He isn't Giotto. He can't be. Still, the voice rises to the surface of his mind like seafoam and he can't fight it off sometimes. He doesn't like the dark commanding thoughts. And, in another lifetime, he would have ignored them. But this world doesn't allow him to dismiss the notion which told him such words were truth.

"When don't I have your back?"

This isn't the interaction he wants to have with Gokudera right now, not at the end of the world. Not this strained, tendon-tight exchange of words, the closest thing they'd had to an argument in ten years, not the way Gokudera's frown cut across his stern face. He rarely made Gokudera frown. Even this many years into their friendship, he didn't like to let him down, despite the inevitability of such disappointment.

Tsuna squeezed his eyes shut; fought the quaking in his guts, the one calling him a liar. He took a deep breath. When he turned around, his face was split by a smile again.

Liar.

It's for Gokudera.

Liar.

"I have to go soon." The smile hurt his face.

"Tenth...if something happpened..."

And he knew it was coming.

He knew it was coming before he even looked at Gokudera. The inevitability hung between them like incense smoke. He could feel it: Gokudera leaning forward slightly, the fingers of one hand outstretched toward him--Gokudera probably didn't even realize he was doing it. The air in the meters between them compressed.

Don't say it. Don't say it. Don't say--

"I need you to come back. Tsuna."

And there it was. Ten years in the making. Three seconds fragile. More vulnerability gathered and heated and pressed into this moment than in all the tender bellies of all their childhoods combined.

But the rough voice in his head cleared its throat. Mafia men were not fragile. They were not vulnerable or tender. They were men of obligation, of duty above all else.

So Tsuna smiled over his shoulder. At this point, he couldn't tell if the smile was sincere or fake, if he meant it or if he simply was used to comforting the wounded. It didn't matter.

"I know," he said, a gentle hand on Gokudera's shoulder, "I'm glad we're finally friends."

And his heart hurt when he watched Gokudera swallow. This had hung between them for years. And not for the first time this night, he cursed his fear and his indecision. His lover slept in the room above them, peaceful with her face buried in her long hair, and she would not be the one Tsuna would say goodbye to tonight.

"No," Gokudera said, bravely holding Tsuna's eyes, "I mean..."

Tsuna watched him. For a decade, they both had kept so much so close to their chests, so much unsaid--Tsuna's fears, Gokudera's warmth, uncertainties which were tangled up with both of them. What would it change to do it differently now?

One thick moment later, Gokudera lowered his hand to his side. "I mean, we need you here. Do your best, Tenth."

Thank you.

Tsuna turned to the window, watched the last rays of sunset burn streaks into the darkening horizon, orange and fierce. "A red sunset, Gokudera-kun. That's a good omen, right?"

He hoped Gokudera couldn't hear the constriction of his throat.

When Gokudera spoke, his breath was a whisper. "Yes, Tenth. It is."